Accused of lying on immigration forms, they are asked about the '90s war.

By LANE DEGREGORY Published December 13, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - The immigration officers came before 5 a.m. Monday, pounding on the doors of 15 St. Petersburg homes.

Slavko Krsmanovic, 17, woke to flashlights on his porch, eight agents pointing guns at his house. They wanted his dad. He told them his dad was driving his mom to work. So the agents waited until Strahinja Krsmanovic came home.

"As soon as he got out of the car, they handcuffed him behind his back and arrested him," Slavko said. "They kept calling him 'the suspect.' What did he do?"

* * *

All of the immigrants arrested are men between age 40 and 60. Most are husbands and fathers who work two jobs to pay mortgages. They all belong to St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church. They were part of a wave of about 3,000 Serbs who came to St. Petersburg as refugees in the early 1990s, during the war that dissected Yugoslavia.

The 15 men are suspected of lying on their immigration applications, of falsifying their permanent resident papers. Officials say they also could be connected to, or know something about, war crimes that happened 11 years ago.

Agents took the men's passports and green cards. Then they took them to jail.

Customs agents asked the men whether they had served in the Serbian army.

And where they were stationed in July 1995.

* * *

The arrests were the most recent in a series of Serbian roundups across the country. In August 2004, immigration officials in Boston jailed a Serb they said had committed war crimes. In March 2006, immigration officials in Phoenix arrested 24 Serbs suspected of atrocities.

Those men allegedly took part in a July 1995 massacre at a farm outside Srebrenica, where a reported 1,200 Muslims were gunned down.

The St. Petersburg men might have information about the massacre, said prosecutor Donald Hansen from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"Through work at the Hague, we're still finding out who was in the units that did the massacres," Hansen said.

The 15 men were charged with denying that they had been in the military. They said relief workers told them if they admitted to being soldiers, they wouldn't be allowed to emigrate to the United States.

During that war, every man age 17 or older had to serve, said Father Stephan Zaremba, priest at the Serbian church. "Those who refused were sent to concentration camps or shot," he said. "What would you do?"

By Tuesday morning, 10 of the St. Petersburg Serbs had been questioned and released. The remaining five were scheduled to appear in federal court at 2 p.m. Only four were there when Judge Thomas McCoun III called the court to order.

They shuffled in slowly, heavy chains dragging between their ankles, orange jumpsuits sagging across their slumped shoulders.

The bailiff gave each man headphones, and a translator stood by a microphone. The bailiff explained that the fifth man, Ostoja Saric, wasn't there because "he wasn't on the list."

The judge asked each man's wife to take the stand. None of them spoke English. Sekula Bilic's case was called first.

He's 37, a construction worker, the youngest of the four men. When his wife walked toward the judge shaking, he smashed his fist into his dark eyes.

They had been married 15 years and lived in Florida for six. They had a $69,500 mortgage on a little house on Seventh Street in St. Petersburg. And they had three children, ages 13, 10 and 3.

The charge of falsifying immigration papers carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, the prosecutor said. If the men also were charged with war crimes, they could be sent to jail or back to Bosnia.

The judge told each man to hire an attorney. In two weeks, he said, they would have to come back to court for their hearings. Until then, the men would have to stay in jail, unless their wives were willing to put up $50,000 bonds.

One by one, the women all signed over their homes: Strahinja Krsmanicvoc, whose husband is a computer tech, whose two youngest sons were home when the agents came. Ljila Kordic, whose husband works in manufacturing, who has a son and daughter. Jadranko DGastic is divorced, but his live-in girlfriend took legal responsibility for making sure he didn't skip town.

* * *

By late Tuesday, the four men were out of jail. Their families didn't ask them about the war, or what had happened so long ago. Most of them never had.

They didn't want to know. They had lost everything in the war: family, homes, friends. They had wallowed in refugee camps, fought for permits to get out, come to Florida with just their clothes and determination. For more than a decade, they had worked to buy homes and businesses, send their kids to college. Now everything was crashing down. The past they thought they had escaped still haunted them.

"In the old Yugoslavia, 90 percent of us were in the war, and 90 percent of us didn't want to be," said Sladjana Bilic, her eyes red and swollen. "Just because they had to be in the army doesn't mean they were part of a massacre."

Scott Raspopovich, who is president of St. Sava Serbian church, doesn't understand why only Serbs are being hauled in for questioning, when Croatians and Muslims also killed people in the war. "If you define war crimes as shooting the enemy, yes, these men probably all did. But what choice did they have?" he said.

"Were they involved in those massacres? Not that I know of. If they were, they sure never told anyone."

I wonder who put out the order to target the Serbs. Why not the Albanians and Croatians who came here? I know that falsifying documents is not to be taken lightly, but why single out one very small minority while we have millions from south of the border who have done the same (I know they are rounding a few of them up now).

These people aren't sucking our social services dry, sounds like they are and have been paying their own way. It's sad for the wives and children caught up in this. Some will have to go on welfare or go back to Serbia if they have any families left to help them.

"Scott Raspopovich, who is president of St. Sava Serbian church, doesn't understand why only Serbs are being hauled in for questioning, when Croatians and Muslims also killed people in the war. "If you define war crimes as shooting the enemy, yes, these men probably all did. But what choice did they have?" he said."

Silly question. They aren't Mohammedans or Latins. They are the hated Orthodox.

The Serbs should have taken sanctuary in a church, that seems to work for illegal/ID theft Latina aliens. Then they could send their kids all over the world crying about the injustice of the United States against "immigrants".

I've already Googled numerous articles about Srebrenica. I've seen no proof that a massacre never occurred. However, I have seen a number of counter-claims about what happened at Srebrenica and conflicting opinions concerning how many were killed and in what circumstances.

You do understand the difference between a proof and a counter-claim, yes?

There are always dissenting opinions about historical events. There are still those who claim the Holocaust never happened, for instance. So it doesn't surprise me that there is a school of thought which wants to cast doubt on the occurrence of a massacre at Srebrenica. But proof? That's another level.

Your Kosovo reference escapes me. The men quoted in the article were quizzed about Srebrenica, no?

The accusations about what happened at Srebrenica are not confined simply to the "yammerings of a bunch of Islamic terrorists". The initial allegations may have come from Muslims but these were subsequently studied by both non-governmental agencies such as the Red Cross and also by western governmental investigators, including the US government. They're not infallible, of course. God knows they've screwed up the Iraq situation completely.

Neither do I subscribe to the theory that because a Muslim said it, it must therefore be a lie or because a "Christian" Serb said it, it must be true. I'm well aware that in the post 9/11 world, killing a Muslim is now considered to be a public service in some circles, especially on FR but that has no bearing on the veracity of claims about what happened at Srebrenica, neither does it gel with Christian principles.

You made the claim that the massacre allegations were proven to be false. Your "proof" is simply an ad hominem argument which asks us to take the word of, "Christian" Serbs over "Islamic terrorists".

The accusations about what happened at Srebrenica are not confined simply to the "yammerings of a bunch of Islamic terrorists". The initial allegations may have come from Muslims but these were subsequently studied by both non-governmental agencies such as the Red Cross and also by western governmental investigators, including the US government. They're not infallible, of course. God knows they've screwed up the Iraq situation completely.

And under the Clinton administration no less. Back before 9/11, when catering to Muslim yammering was a given.

Neither do I subscribe to the theory that because a Muslim said it, it must therefore be a lie or because a "Christian" Serb said it, it must be true. I'm well aware that in the post 9/11 world, killing a Muslim is now considered to be a public service in some circles, especially on FR but that has no bearing on the veracity of claims about what happened at Srebrenica, neither does it gel with Christian principles.

There is nothing Christian about beleiving known liars and punishing Christians for their allegations. These are the same Muslims caught in the act manufacturing casualties in Lebanon TWICE.

As far as I know, not a single member of Lt. Calley's platoon was arrested ex post facto for having served in a unit that committed a war crime at My Lai.

I am just thinking, where would they get any kind of hard evidence to prove that any one of those Serbs actually committed a war crime.

If we have that kind of capability, then we should have no problems finding Osama. But the problem is that we try to circumvent lack of evidence by making circumstantial allegations equal to evidence in order to create some sort of imaginary justice.

The fuzziness and the hysteria involved in this serbophobic witchunt is evident from the fact that 15 were arrested and 10 released the next day! The authorities acted on a tip (could have been even a malicious one), and without sufficient evidence simply arrested innocent people.

They are also comfortable knowing that immigrants will not sue the state, so no special precautionary measures are necessary.

The mad dog we have created in Bush-controlled America will one day turn on Americans. One of these days, you will be going home from work and you will find yourself in jail for being near or for working in a corporation that is accused of something. You will be arrested on nothing more than someone's malicious tip, or something similar.

Having said that, falsifying records in order to obtain a green card is a real subject the courts should be spending tax-payers' money on, along with catching all the illegals that are coming out of the woodwork.

If the courts are really after falsifiers of green cards, we would be reading about it every day, for I am sure the Serbs are not the only ones who could possibly do such a thing!

where are the 8,000 bodies...? where are the 100,000, no wait, 10,000, no wait, 3,000 bodies in Kosovo. Of the 8,000 in Srebrenica, they were sent to fight in Kosovo and other places, long story short...as directed by our very own CIA and ISI.....

27
posted on 12/27/2006 10:58:35 PM PST
by tgambill
(I would like to comment.....)

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